Jeremy Paxman, Bill Nighy and Gyles Brandreth, who have all shared their secret pleasures. Photograph: PA

For me, it is old man's pubs. Unreconstructed, non-gastro, pro-smoking locals. They should be full of grey-haired barflies, noses swollen from drink, chatting, arguing, or sitting quietly. The stained carpets, old signs and faded velvet curtains excite me. I love the stink of the beer kegs and the sense of community that you just don't get in trendy bars. Smelly old uncool pubs are my secret delight.

A new book, Modern Delight, has asked 80 celebrities to reveal what makes them glow inside. Gyles Brandreth has made the news by admitting that he gets a kick from the death of his friends:

"They must be older than me, of course or, if younger, only slightly so. I am not talking here of the deaths of children or the young. Or of soldiers killed in action ... I am talking about the delight of opening the morning paper and turning to the obituaries and seeing the face of a near-contemporary who has just snuffed it and being able to say to my wife, 'Do you see old so-and-so's gone?'"

A secret pleasure is often a guilty one, either in Brandreth's case because it reveals something unpleasant about your character, or because it runs at odds with who you are supposed to be. A few years ago, Naomi Wolf confessed to the Guardian that she can't resist a copy of Star magazine - basically a trashier, American version of Heat. Not necessarily something to boast about if you are trying to earn your crust as an intellectual.

And while a secret delight might be simple, the reaction it provokes is almost always over the top. For JB Priestly, whose 1949 book Delight inspired the new collection, mineral water triggered an effusive waterfall of prose:

"Not only is it good this mineral water ... it is also beautiful. It gurgles out of its green bottle like a chill and sparkling mountain spring, and arrives in the furred desert of my throat like a benediction."

Priestley's mineral water habit seems positively mundane besides some of the modern-day celebrity pleasures. Jeremy Paxman admits to getting a thrill out of spotting frogspawn in the pond. He loves the inevitability of it, he says; the fact that despite everything that happens in the human world there will always be frogs in the pond spawning.

What a weird little pleasure, Paxo. Although the niche delight is, of course, quite common. In my boyfriend's case, the sound of someone doing maintenance gives him, as he calls it, 'head fizz'. "I love hearing someone tinkering," he explains. "The sound of them breathing, rifling through their tools. What they do is a mystery to me, but they know exactly what they're doing. I could listen to it all day."

So what about you? Do you get a thrill when someone falls asleep on the tube and you know they'll miss their stop? Or maybe the feeling of a hairdresser combing your hair makes you feel all tingly. Tell us about your secret delight in the comments section below.